In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than fifty years, award-winning historian John Mack Faragher portrays America's famous frontier hero. Boone (1734-1820), who came to popular attention in 1784 with the publication of "Kentucke", the narrative of his adventures published by John Filson, scouted the trans-Appalachian west for settlement before any other English-speaking American, surveyed and helped build the Wilderness Road, and led the settlers' struggle against the Shawnee defenders of Kentucky. Yet the complex range of Boone's accomplishments has inspired conflicting accounts of his life and character. Hailed as both an extraordinary and common man, Daniel Boone is an intriguing subject whose legends are enveloped in paradox. History portrays Boone as an Indian-fighting frontiersman, yet he objected to that reputation, proclaiming his belief in the Quaker tolerance of his forebears. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone's own hand, and a treasure of reminiscence and recollection gathered by nineteenth-century antiquarians, Faragher employs the methods of new social history to produce a portrait that defines the man and the times he helped shape. The author addresses the relationship between Native Americans and settlers in the formative period of our history; the contradictions in development and commercialism that frequently left those who struggled the hardest with the fewest rewards; and the manner in which heroes are manufactured, utilized, and treated. Blending themes from a much vitalized western and frontier history with the words and ideas of ordinary people, Faragher has produced a book that will stand as the definitive life of Daniel Boone for the next century.

Copy in the Staff and Faculty Lounge is paperback; 24 cm.

Chronology / Part One: Curiosity Is Natural: 1734 to 1755 -- My Domestic Happiness: 1755 to 1769 -- In Quest of the Country of Kentucke: 1769 to 1773 -- On the Banks of Kentucke River: 1773 to 1776 -- Prisoners to Old Chillicothe: 1776 to 1778 -- A Vast Expence of Blood and Treasure: 1778 to 1784 / Part Two: Unable to Call a Single Acre His Own: 1784 to 1789 -- A Wanderer in the World: 1789 to 1811 / Part Three: God Never Made a Man of My Prisipel to Be Lost: 1811 to 1820 -- Left Until I'm Put in the Ground: Myth and Memory / Abbreviations.